Preprint series of the economic department
The capitalism of post-Soviet Russia: geopolitical economy (the nature of the foreign
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- Table 2 – Share of the largest 100 Russian corporations in GDP 2 Index Period 1994
- Table 3 – Net export of capital by the private sector in 2000-2014 (according to data for the balance of payments of the Russian Federation) Year
- US dollars 2000
- Table 4 – Largest deals involving the purchase by Russian firms of foreign shares, 2005-2010
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3. The capitalism of post-Soviet Russia: geopolitical economy (the nature of the foreign economic and political goals of Russian capital and of the state) As can readily be seen, the two preceding sections have been in the nature of an introduction, though a fundamentally important one, to the main question which this text began by posing: is the Russian state of the present decade imperialist? The extensiveness of the first and second sections was no accident. In replying to the main question the article poses, the most difficult task is to define what imperialism amounts to in the present century, and what the nature is of the Russian economic system. Once these questions have been answered, it becomes far easier to substantiate a position on the central question as well. What, then, characterises the Russian state as imperialist, in the view of many foreign and some Russian authors? 1 If we leave aside invective and pure rhetoric, 1 then we are left with a number of
1 See, for example, Gusev A. “Pochemu ni Putin, ni Poroshenko ne zaberut Donbass?” [“Why is it that neither Putin nor Poroshenko will capture the Donbass?”]. Ekho Moskvy. URL: http://echo.msk.ru/blog/guseff/1525384-echo. 23
arguments which in our view deserve genuinely to be paid very close attention, and which, moreover, contain a measure of truth. * * * The first argument adduced in order to show that the Russian federation is a subject of the “new imperialism” is linked to the fact that its economy is based to a significant degree on production concentrated in the hands of large corporations. This is indeed true, and to confirm this feature of Russian capitalism, about which we have written in the past, we can cite well-known data (see Table 2). In addition, many of these corporations have subsidiaries outside Russia’s borders, and invest money more or less actively in projects abroad. At first glance, this would seem to confirm the presence in Russia of the economic basis for imperialist policies. Table 2 – Share of the largest 100 Russian corporations in GDP 2 Index Period 1994 1997 1999 2003 2006 2010 2012 Earnings of the largest 100 Russian companies, trillion rubles 196,6
835,9 1,9
6,96 15,1
25,9 35,1
GDP, trillion rubles
610,7 2342,5
4,8 13,2
26,9 46,3
62,6 Share of the 100 largest companies in GDP, % 32,2 35,7
40,1 52,7
56,2 55,9
56,1 Source: Authors’ calculations, based on data from Rosstat (Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation) and the Rating Agency Expert RA (RAEX). Later, we shall attempt to show that this is nevertheless only a semblance of the basis for imperialism. Here, we should stress that this semblance is not accidental. Within the Russian economy the level of concentration is indeed sufficient for the largest corporations to be considered monopolies (as defined by Lenin) on this basis alone. These firms undermine free competition, and
1 This rhetoric may also be based on the “theories” of the liberal theoreticians of imperialism who characterise it in terms of the “idea of empire”, of a “deeply held belief in the right to dominate others” (Razack). The “argumentation” of such authors is well illustrated by the following statement: “Imperialism is not just about accumulation but also about the idea of empire.… Empire is a structure…a deeply held belief in the need and right to dominate others for their own
Veltmeyer H. and Petras J. “Imperialism and Capitalism: Rethinking an Intimate Relationship”. International Critical Thought, 2015, vol. 5, № 2, p.166. 2 The data on the earnings of large enterprises are from Ezhegodnyy reyting krupneyshikh kompaniy “Ekspert-200” [“Expert-200” annual rating of the largest companies]. URL: http://www.raexpert.ru/ratings/expert400/ . The data for GDP are from Rosstat (Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation). 24
are thus bearers of a feature specific to imperialism. But the economy of the present decade, unlike that of a hundred years ago, is global, and Russian corporations in their overwhelming majority cannot lay claim to the role of global transnational corporations. There are some exceptions, and hence some of the preconditions exist for the formation in our country, not as rare exceptions but as the rule, of the kind of corporations that might act as the instigators of imperialist expansion (we should recall these reservations, “as a rule”, “in most cases”, and so forth. We shall return to them later, since they are not fortuitous, and reflect the contradictory, transitional nature of Russia’s geoeconomic position). Moreover, some of the behaviour even of today’s Russian transnational corporations recalls that of imperialist aggressors. But for the present, in the overwhelming majority of cases – and we shall attempt later to demonstrate this – we are confronted almost exclusively with “normal” expansion, characteristic of any capital that has attained a large enough scale to enter world markets. As was shown earlier, imperialist aggression in the proper sense begins at the point where truly massive transnational capital that has been over-accumulated within the framework of the national economic system (and whose sales are comparable in scale to the GDPs of middle-ranking countries) enters the world market not as one among many atomised producers-competitors with equal rights, but as a subject of the manipulation of various segments of world economic processes. Russian corporate capital does not at present belong to this category, and for this there are a number of reasons. In the first place, Russia is not marked by an over-accumulation of capital. The main reasons for the constant shortage of investment within the country and for the incessant craving for foreign investment on the part of the Russian authorities are the instability of and dominant role played by the shadowy “rules of the game” (extending to “business by understandings”), 1 and also what the language of the modern economic mainstream terms the “negative diffusion of institutions”, 2 arising as a result of the negative convergence of survivals of a Soviet-type economy, of the relations of semi-peripheral capitalism, and even of late feudal forms. The features of this have long been familiar: weak defence of property and contract rights; instability in the areas of legislation and the political situation (few could have predicted in 2013 that sanctions would be imposed on the Russian
1 See Oleynik A. “Biznes po ponyatiyam’: ob institutsional’noy modeli rossiyskogo kapitalizma” [“Business by understandings’: on the institutional model of Russian capitalism”]. Voprosy ekonomiki, 2001, no. 5, pp. 4-25. 2 By the diffusion of institutions is understood the process of mutual interpenetration of the norms of various institutions. In its content, diffusion is close to the concept of “friction” or of the mutual interaction of institutions. In the process of diffusion the structural make-up and the ranking of the norms of an institution are changed, with the result that the influence of the institution on the behaviour of economic agents is changed as well. If this change has a negative effect on the behaviour of the economic agents, the diffusion is destructive (see Hodgson G. “Zhiznesposobnost’ institutsional’noy ekonomiki” [“The viability of the institutional economy”]. Evolyutsionnaya
Yaponiya segodnya. 1997, pp. 29-74; see also Petrosyan D.S. “Institutsional’nye patologii national’noy ekonomiki” [“Institutional pathologies of the national economy”]. Audit i finansovyy analiz, 2007, no. 2, pp. 372-391).
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Federation, substantially altering the internal political situation as well); very high levels of bureaucratism and corruption; 1 and most important, the presence of a shadow state administration, 2
which allows organs at the federal, regional and other levels to interfere arbitrarily in economic processes. This situation gives rise not so much to the export of capital from Russia as to capital flight, on an extremely significant scale (see Table 3). Table 3 – Net export of capital by the private sector in 2000-2014 (according to data for the balance of payments of the Russian Federation) Year Export of capital according to data for the balance of payments of the Russian Federation, in billions of US dollars 2000 23.1
2001 13.6
2002 7.0
2003 0.3
2004 8.6
2005 0.3
2006 -43.7*
2007 -87.8*
2008 133.6
2009 57.5
2010 30.8
2011 81.4
2012 53.9
2013 61.6
2014 153.0
First half of 2015 (estimate) 525
* According to data for the balance of payments there was a net import, not export, of capital in 2006 and 2007. Source: Central Bank of the Russian Federation 3 .
1 According to international ratings data compiled by the organisation Transparency International on perceived levels of corruption, Russia in 2014 held 136 th place out of 175 countries. Russia scored an index figure of 27 on a scale in which the lowest level of corruption was represented by a figure of 100. For comparison, the US was in 17 th place with an index figure of 74, while Finland, Sweden and Norway were in third, fourth and fifth place with figures for perceived corruption of 89, 87 and 86 respectively. See Transparency International. Corruption Perceptions Index 2014: Results. Available at http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results. 2 See Buzgalin A. and Kolganov A. “Rossiyskaya ekonomicheskaya sistema: spetsifika rynka i ego korporativno- gosudarstvennoe regulirovanie” [“The Russian economic system: peculiarities of the market and of its corporative-state regulation”]. Problemy teorii i praktiki upravleniya, 2014, no. 9, pp. 8-16. 3 See Chistyy vvoz/vyvoz kapitala chastnym sektorom v 2000-2014 godakh i I-II kvartalakh 2015 goda [Net import/export of capital by the private sector in the years 2000-2014 and the first and second quarters of 2015]. Tsentral’nyy Bank Rossiyskoy Federatsii. Last updated 5 August 2015. URL: www.cbr.ru/statistics/credit_statistics/bop/outflow.xlsx. 26
The outflow of capital in 2014 was the most massive for any of the years for which the Central Bank has published statistics for this index (1994-2014). The bank ascribes this outflow to a growth in holdings of foreign securities; to foreign debt payments by banks and other companies under the conditions of sanctions; and also to the issuing of new instruments supplying liquidity to banks in foreign currency (Central Bank experts note that a sum of $19.8 billion, affected by this latter factor, will return to Russia, since foreign currency credits are issued to the banks on a returnable basis). 1
2
There are also alternative estimates of the outflow of capital, according to which the official data are exaggerated by a factor of at least two. These estimates indicate that in 2011, for example, the outflow of capital was not $81.4 billion, but in the region of $40 billion. 3 The criticism of the methods used by the Central Bank for calculating the outflow of capital is based on the fact that a “book-keeping” approach to calculating this index fails to take account of the economic essence of the transactions. Operations that formally amount to an outflow of capital, but which do not have an adverse effect on the country’s economy, include deals through which Russian firms merge with or take over foreign assets; the repaying by Russian enterprises of debts contracted abroad, without their refinancing; the reinvestment of profits earned by non-resident daughter companies during a particular year, and others. 4
It is also important to note that in most cases, capital exports from the Russian Federation do not amount to long-term productive investments aimed at winning control over the periphery, but – and we repeat – represent the flight of capital from taxes and instability, with the sums concerned
1 See “Ottok kapitala iz Rossii stal samym masshtabnym za vsyu istoriyu” [“The outflow of capital from Russia has become the most massive in all history”]. TASS: informatsionnoe agenstvo Rossii. 16 January 2015. URL: http://tass.ru/ekonomika/1703391. 2 See “Minfin: ottok kapitala iz RF v 2015g. ‒ $70-80 mlrd.” [“Finance Ministry: outflow of capital from the RF in 2015 to be $70-80 billion”]. Vesti Ekonomika, 8 July 2015. URL: http://www.vestifinance.ru/articles/59772. 3 Data from the authors of the report “Ot mifov k real’nosti” [“From myths to reality”], prepared in December 2012 by experts of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the MGU National Intellectual Reserve Centre and the firm Ernst and Young. The authors of the report urge that the following corrections be made to the accounting methods (data for 2011): from the official estimate of capital outflow of $81.4 billion, the sum of $8 billion should be deducted due to the structuring of direct investments via offshore firms; a further $6 billion due to support of parent structures by “daughters” of foreign banks; another $6 billion to account for the expansion by Russian airlines of their aircraft fleet; another $9.9 billion under the heading of “pure errors and omissions”; and also a sum of $10 billion for merger and takeover deals. As a result of this, the estimate for capital outflows shrinks by half compared to the calculation using the methods of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, and comes to $41.4 billion. (For a more detailed account, see Osipov I. “Mify ob ottoke kapitala: skol’ko deneg real’no vyvodyat iz Rossii” [“Myths about the outflow of capital: how much money is really being taken out of Russia”]. Forbes Russia, 17 December 2012. URL: http://www.forbes.ru/sobytiya/finansy/231099-mify-ob-ottoke-kapitala-skolko-deneg-realno-vyvodyat-iz-rossii). 4 See “Issledovanie ottoka kapitala: Pokazateli real’nogo ottoka kapitala iz Rossii zavysheny kak minimum vdvoe i mnogie stereotipy ob ottoke neverny” [“Study of capital outflow: The indices for the real outflow of capital from Russia are exaggerated by a factor of at least two, and many stereotypes concerning this outflow are incorrect”]. 17 December 2012, Ernst and Young. URL: http://www.ey.com/RU/ru/Newsroom/News-releases/Press-Release---2012-12-17.
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finishing up in offshore zones 1 or as savings, in investments in property and other sources of stable, guaranteed profits in the countries of the “centre”. The number of merger deals and takeovers, carried out with the participation of Russian transnational corporations and in which the shares acquired represent long-term investments aimed at international expansion, is very small. Moreover, these deals are oriented mainly toward developed countries. The best-known examples of such operations are listed in Table 4.
(continues) Year Company performing merger or acquisition Targeted country Object of merger or acquisition Sector Shareholding acquired, % Cost of transaction, million US$ 2007
Norilsk
Nickel Canada
LionOre Mining
Mining of ores 100.0
5865
2010 Vimpel-
Com Ukraine
Kyivstar GSM
Telecommunications
100.0 a 5589
2008 Evraz
Canada IPSCO Inc. Iron and steel 100.0 4250
2007
Gazprom Belarus Beltransgas Gas transportation 50.0 b
2500 2007
Evraz
USA Oregon
Steel Mills
Iron and steel 100.0
2276
2008 Evraz
Ukraine Palmrose Iron & steel, coke and mining of ores 100.0 2108
2005
Lukoil
Great Britain
Nelson Resources Gold
100.0 2000
2009
Surgutneftegaz Hungary MOL
Oil and gas 21.2
1852 c
2008 LUKOIL
Italy ISAB
Oil refinery 49.0
1830 d, e 2005
Alfa Group Turkey Turkcell Telecommunication 13
1602
1 In estimating investment flows between countries, it should also be borne in mind that according to official statistics offshore zones are large-scale exporters of Foreign Direct Investments, largely due to “round-tripping”. The investments involved return from the offshore zones to their countries of origin after receiving foreign status and becoming subject to a lower tax regime (see Kuznetsov A. “Transnatsional’nye korporatsii v mire” [“Transnational corporations in the world”]. Mirovoe i natsional’noe khozyaystvo, 2014, no. 2). Experts note that in the years from 2007 to 2011 the total volume of direct investment by Russia “in offshore zones” and the sums invested in the country “from offshore zones” practically coincided, at $135.6 billion and $133 billion respectively. The funds exported in the form of direct investments in offshore zones thus return to Russia in the medium term (cited in Osipov I. “Mifi ob ottoke kapitala: skol’ko deneg real’no vyvodyat iz Rossii” [“Myths about the outflow of capital: how much money is really exported from Russia”]. Forbes.ru, 17 Dec. 2012. URL: http://www.forbes.ru/sobytiya/finansy/231099-mify-ob-ottoke-kapitala- skolko-deneg-realno-vyvodyat-iz-rossii ; “Issledovanie ottoka kapitala: Pokazateli real’nogo ottoka kapitala is Rossii zavysheny kak minimum vdvoe i mnogie stereotipy ob ottoke neverny” [“Study of capital outflow: The indices for the real outflow of capital from Russia are exaggerated by a factor of at least two, and many of the stereotypes concerning this outflow are incorrect”]. Ernst and Young, 17 Dec. 2012. URL: http://www.ey.com/RU/ru/Newsroom/News- releases/Press-Release---2012-12-17 ).
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Table 4 – Largest deals involving the purchase by Russian firms of foreign shares, 2005-2010 (concluded) Download 0.74 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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